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Atlas Shrugged

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Comments

  • #92
    Valmont
    Registered Users Posts: 5,856 ✭✭✭Valmont


    Blue_Lagoon wrote: »
    Rand in Atlas Shrugged does not seem to suffer from too many uncertainties when advocating her Brave New World, or its surrogate God in the mysterious John Galt. This Galt exemplifies a Social-Darwinian uberman that is All Good and All Knowing, with a cold, objective means-ends rationality and strength of selfishness that would make Nietzsche blush. In like manner, this cold objectivism permeates the bedroom of character development in her lead female and male characters, with a shallow and superficial depth of feeling between partners.
    I know it would make your critique easier if John Galt was portrayed as a God in the book but he isn't so please stick to what the book has actually said. Yes, he is portrayed as one of the books heroes but switching that to the pejorative "God" to make your point is just dishonest.

    Next thing you will be telling us that Humbert Humbert had a fetish for mature women.


  • #93
    iUseVi
    Registered Users Posts: 1,435 ✭✭✭iUseVi


    Blue_Lagoon wrote: »
    Noting inconsistencies can at times be troubling? For example, was there some reason why you completely ignored the problem of cross-cultural comparisons of faculty when using the “Left” label to categorize American faculty (noted in my earlier post)? Are such labels context-specific in terms of being different for different disciplines (e.g., Humanities vs. Business), or by state, or region, or country? Would someone you have labeled “Left” in America be considered equally “Left” in Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Iran, or China?

    Yes, thank you, if only I could thank your post twice. I wish people would stop using left and right so blithely, people cannot be pidgeon-holed so easily.


  • #94
    iUseVi
    Registered Users Posts: 1,435 ✭✭✭iUseVi


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.

    Honestly now, the rules of logic do not apply so easily to ethics. Does one baby equal one homeless person? Should you torture someone to save a whole city? Anyone who thinks "A is A" can be applied to such matters is either entirely without emotion or hasn't actually thought about ethics for more than 10 seconds. Rand's theories just don't work in the real world! The first sign of any complication and they fall to pieces.

    I'm not arguing that A is not A, but sometimes A is B, or A is not quite A, and sometimes no one has a clue what A is! Or A is several things at once. Human behaviour cannot be described by any simple mathematical equations, however appealing it would be to think so.


  • #95
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #96
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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  • #97
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

    Would someone you have labeled “Left” in America be considered equally “Left” in Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Iran, or China?

    .
    No, but at least the meaning of "left" is clear in an Irish context.The policies of a Classical Liberal would nowadays be closest to a Conservative in the UK or a Republican in the US. As opposed to a Liberal or a Democrat. A Republican here of course, is simply a more extreme version of a Nationalist. The laissez-faire policy during the famine was a classic classically liberal policy....(see how confusing it gets)
    robindch wrote: »
    Probably no more than the chances of some university's biology department offering tenure to a creationist :)
    Assuming we all agree that creationism is the less rational and less scientific theory compared to evolution, and given that there is a known tendency for people to swing towards the right in their voting habits as they get older and more rational, why is creationism inextricably linked with the Republican side in US politics?
    You would think that after 200 years, the ideas of Charles Darwin would no longer to be considered radical. Logically, evolution with its "survival of the fittest" mantra should be associated with the right.
    Creationism with its more emotional "sharing is caring" dogma should be associated with the left wing. Is it simply that organised religion has never trusted left wing intellectuals with their fancy new ideas?


  • #98
    recedite
    Closed Accounts Posts: 13,993 ✭✭✭✭recedite


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Your literary tastes are certainly diverse;)


  • #99
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #100
    Glenster
    Registered Users Posts: 2,626 ✭✭✭Glenster


    It's suspiciously similar in tone to Crime and Punishment.

    I'm not sure I agree that it's badly written, it's just dense and circumlocutory. Not everything is a beachside read.


  • #101
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Valmont wrote: »
    I know it would make your critique easier if John Galt was portrayed as a God in the book but he isn't so please stick to what the book has actually said. Yes, he is portrayed as one of the books heroes but switching that to the pejorative "God" to make your point is just dishonest.
    Atlas Shrugged is not real. It is fiction. You wish to restrict this discussion marching in lock-step fashion to a literal interpretation of a fictional, creative work? How can you insist upon this, when in fact it is a fictional novel subject to interpretation, that also uses metaphor as a device to communicate meaning? John Galt is a fictional character, not a real person, which has been proposed as the All Good, All Powerful exemplification of the Rand alpha entrepreneur and leader. Rand uses metaphor, but her reviewers cannot?


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  • #102
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #103
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,396 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Two good, similarly, reviews of two recent biographies of Rand:

    http://www.slate.com/id/2233966
    http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/60120/

    You'll need a subscription to see a third review in the New Yorker from last November, but it reaches much the same conclusion as the first two above.

    Ms Rand was not a happy camper and, to say the least, it shows in her writing.


  • #104
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Unfortunately, Rand goes on to confound her "objective reality" with subjective value judgments in Atlas Shrugged about what is right, just, and best for mankind, confusing and confounding means-ends rationality with value-rationality (see Max Weber).
    donegalfella wrote: »
    Aristotle's laws of identity
    If all that Rand proclaimed in Atlas Shrugged was purely objective, this reference to Aristotle may have merit, but alas, Rand goes far beyond by offering a very value-laden and subjective ethics, a problem noted by Hume when Aristotle's laws and ethics were confounded.
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    I have read Atlas Shrugged. Perhaps you should consider expanding your “knowledge” and critically reading Of Grammatology (1967), wherein Derrida systematically deconstructs and critically reviews Ferdinand de Saussure (founder of modern linguistics), Claude Levi-Strauss (precursor of structuralism), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (his version of existentialism); or Jan Patocka (philosophy of history) in Derrida’s The Gift of Death (1992)? Or the greatly informal and easier read of Points (1995) edited by Elisabeth Weber, et al, Stanford University, that contains 23 interviews of Derrida from 1974 to 1994?
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Yet another broad sweeping stereotypic generalization, this time mixed with ageism bias? How does this statement contribute substance to our discussion on Atlas Shrugged?
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Life is complex; philosophies even more so. And you continue to insist on a simple, nominal definition of "Left," while avoiding cross-cultural comparisons in terms of how "Left" is differentially defined vis-à-vis "Middle-of-road" or "Right" in different disciplines, contexts, and nations of the world; and how such comparisons may suggest that simple "Left" or "Right" nominal labels provide little substance or understanding as to how someone actually thinks?
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    I cannot speak for all deconstructionists (whomever they may be), as they are more than likely highly varied in their views, understanding, and application of method; but there may be a few anthropologists, geneticists, and evolutionary biologists that would contend that a simple, nominal categorization of someone being labeled “black” or “white” would be “a gross oversimplification of the complexities?”


  • #105
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #106
    Valmont
    Registered Users Posts: 5,856 ✭✭✭Valmont


    robindch wrote: »
    Ms Rand was not a happy camper
    I don't see what Ayn Rand's personal happiness has to do with anything. Unless, having exhausted other avenues of discussion, you are preparing an ad hominem argument? I thought we were discussing her literary work, not her mood swings.
    Ayn Rand biography wrote:
    Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day.
    Oh my, did you happen to write this one, Robindch?


  • #107
    Valmont
    Registered Users Posts: 5,856 ✭✭✭Valmont


    The New York magazine article is quite interesting actually. It's written by an ex-objectivist so it's more balanced than the first one.

    For a satirical look at Ayn Rand's social circle I would recommend Murray Rothbard's play Mozart was a Red.


  • #108
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #109
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,396 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Valmont wrote: »
    I don't see what Ayn Rand's personal happiness has to do with anything.
    Well, I think it kind of does. I think we can probably agree that she was a rather unhappy, rather humorless woman. And I suspect that these characteristics were linked to her grand scheme, though one can only speculate about whether the emotions inspired the scheme, or the scheme inspired the emotions. As above, I suspect the former.

    However, If Rand believes her plan is the best possible for all mankind -- and I think she certainly believed it was -- then I think it's fair to assume that she's sticking to her scheme herself and living out the consequences.

    These consequences are as easily predictable as they are unhappy and I think her own life stands as a reasonable, if incomplete, warning to people about the inevitable end-result of her selfish, self-promoting, unhappy 'Objectivism'.


  • #110
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,396 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    My life is too short to read Rand to the extreme lengths that she wrote :)

    If you, or any of Rand's other supporters here, could explain briefly why selfishness is more likely than altruism to bring out the best in people, then I'm all ears!


  • #111
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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  • #112
    eoin5
    Registered Users Posts: 2,141 ✭✭✭eoin5


    Although I disagree with her on nearly everything I appriciate her ideas. Its a good insight into someone coming from that particular time and place.


  • #113
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,396 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    If they'd read around 150 pages of the bible -- more than most A+A posters, I suspect -- then I'd be quite happy to take them seriously.

    Out of interest, how much of the bible have you read? And have you read chunks of it in both Koine Greek and the Vulgate Latin, as I have? Should I take you seriously if and when you sound off about christianity? :)


  • #114
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #115
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,396 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    My heart goes out to you. I have no idea how you did it :)
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    In this post I included a video of Rand in which she states in simple terms the principal idea that I find unpleasant.

    If what she is saying in this video about her own book is accurate (and I think it's reasonable to assume that it probably is) then one doesn't have to wade through 1,500 pages of poorly-written prose to have the same idea hectored at oneself endlessly.

    Or are you saying that the thing that I object to -- her open promotion of self-interest at the expense of altruism -- is in fact, not an essential part of Objectivism?


  • #116
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #117
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    We agree on something? Il n'a pas écouté mes conseils.
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Here we differ indeed! Nominal labels that lump people into homogeneous "Left" or "Right" categories over simplify the diversity of individual thought, and do not withstand the test of cross-cultural comparisons, much less other tests of differing contexts, thereby rendering their utility problematic. Further, they allow for the mindless creation of "us" vs. "them" adversarial relations that are based more on emotion than substance of thought. Eclectic thinkers that draw ideas from both of these arbitrarily constructed camps fit in neither, but are often subject to the labels of the hour, depending upon the subjective bias of the person attaching the label.
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Although I do not identify myself as a deconstructionist (i.e., not sure what I am, other than I am I), this statement would be easy to deconstruct with a reference to units of analysis as informed by statistical theory. Princeton is a case of one, and Harvard is a case of one; they are not a representative sample of all "American universities" statistically. Rather, to reason from one unit of analysis (two individual cases) to another unit of analysis (the population of American universities) is to commit an ecological fallacy (see Earl Babbie). Added to this, if we were to take a non-quantitative, qualitative purposive sampling approach (see John Creswell), the fact that both Princeton and Harvard are considered Ivy League, and the vast majority of American universities are not, would raise serious issues concerning representativeness.
    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    In addition to Atlas Shrugged, I have also read Anthem (twice now that I wanted to reference it for a point made in this post). It was perhaps obvious that I do not like being arbitrarily labeled into a nominal, either-or category and being deprived of my individual differences in thought, or of a great number of uncertainties. I find a similar grossly oversimplied nominal two-class system in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, as well as Marx’s Das Kapital. In both works, the authors segregate large numbers of diverse people into undifferentiated, nominal categories that are either productive or unproductive, good or evil, capitalistic or labour, etc. In both Rand and Marx, by artificially placing someone into a homogeneous category, their individual identity and thought was lost. Which was not completely ignored by Rand when in Anthem she used satire:

    "How dared you, gutter cleaner," spoke Fraternity 9-3452, "to hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of the one and not of the many?"

    I am not Left. I am not Right. I am! It would be polite to extend that same courtesy to others, addressing the content of their thought, rather than dismissing them with a label.


  • #118
    Permabear
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


  • #119
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,396 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    Given the splendidly flexible attitude the last Republican prezzident maintained towards the rule of law, I'd have said that this imbalance has rather less to do with the nefarious activities of shadowy academic elites and rather more to do with self-preservation.


  • #120
    Black Swan
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,223 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    donegalfella wrote: »
    This post has been deleted.
    My Da has more than once quoted a statement he said came from the 60s: "You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution." So if you are not a part of the problem, you would by your words and actions role model and be "tolerant, open-minded, unbiased, and respectful of the vagaries of individual thought," and not repeat and reinforce the errors of those you oppose when they label your thoughts into an overly simplistic, "Right" or "Left" nominal characterization?

    This is not to exclude a "robust exchange of views and ideas," or civil disagreements as to content, context, etc.; rather, I would hope that such discussions of differences in perspectives would continue. This would be consistent with Newman's idea of a university? Personally, I learn more from such exchanges than from mindlessly nodding my head in agreement with a position I may have taken in the past.

    Although I disagree with the Rand message in Atlas Shrugged, I do accept a part, not all, of her message in Anthem. I would hope that I could make a similar distinction when treating the content of what you offer in these and other posts on boards, and not dismiss you, and what you say, with an overly simplistic and emotionally charged label.


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  • #121
    CPT. SURF
    Closed Accounts Posts: 321 ✭✭CPT. SURF


    Extreme political theories of the right and left fall down for the same reason...human selfishness. In an ideal world all people would be represented by an educated, informed, and caring group of people who would exercise and implement a reasoned system where there is neither too much regulation nor not enough regulation. Things like Marxism and Objectivism are pretty naive in my opinion, or at least proponents of such theories seem to be.


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